Every Dussehra, India burns an effigy of a ten-headed demon. In Gadchiroli, Bisrakh, Mandsaur and a some of other places, the same night is spent in prayer or mourning. The communities that worship Ravan point to a long line of Dalit-Bahujan and Adivasi retellings, of the history where they were often written down as monsters.
Ravan's father is the sage Vishrava, grandson of the sage Pulastya, and Ravan is said to have mastered the Vedas and the shastras. His mother, Kaikasi, is the daughter of Sumali, the Rakshasa who first held Lanka. Tradition even has a name for the blend, Brahmarakshasa. He drives out his half-brother Kubera, the god of wealth, to take Lanka. He also wins boons from Brahma through long austerity, which is the asura's route to power.
He is born with ten heads and called Dashagriva, meaning 'ten-necked'. The name Ravan, meaning 'roaring' or 'crying', comes later and from Shiva. In the Kailash episode, Dashagriva mocks Shiva's attendant Nandi, tries to uproot the mountain, and is pinned under it by Shiva's toe. His scream shakes the three worlds, and that gives him his name. Pinned there, he sings the Shiva Tandava Stotram, traditionally attributed to him, and Shiva frees him and gives him the sword Chandrahasa, 'the moon-blade'. The Gupta-era Ravananugraha panel shows the scene: Ravan beneath the mountain playing a veena made from his own head and arms, with Shiva and Parvati above.
Perhaps the first rewriting to Ravan in popular imagination comes from Michael Madhusudan Dutt's 1861 Bengali epic Meghnad Badh Kavya ("The Slaying of Meghnad") centres on Ravan's son Meghnad, also called Indrajit, and his death at Lakshmana's hands. Dutt wrote in a letter to Rajnarayan Basu that he despised 'Rama and his rabble' while Ravan 'elevates and kindles my imagination, he was a grand fellow".
The Gonds of Gadchiroli see Ravan as a Gondi king and an environmentalist, and worship him and Meghnad. Bhil and Koli communities also venerate him.
In Gadchiroli, Gond communities worship Ravan and his son Meghnad, especially at a tribal festival in Phalgun. They call themselves Ravanvanshis, 'descendants of Ravan', and reject his demonisation.
In Bisrakh in Uttar Pradesh, about 40 km from Delhi and near Greater Noida, a Ravan temple stands beside an ancient Shiva shrine. The village claims he was born there and that its name comes from his father Vishrava, and villagers mourn him through the nine days before Dussehra.
In Maharashtra, Ashok Bagul's Adivasi group opposes effigy burning and points to the epic's killings of Shambuka and Vali and its treatment of Ekalavya and Karna. In Nashik, the Bohada festival honours Ravan alongside asura figures such as Mahishasura and Bakasura.
In Punjab, the Bharatiya Dalit Sena, the Mahatma Ravan Youth Federation and Ravan Sena call him 'Mahatma Ravan' and describe themselves as his descendants. Among the Valmiki community, Lakhbir 'Lankesh', who heads Ravan Sena Bharat, treats Ravan as the community's patron deity and protests his burning. His group prefers the Uttara Kanda, in which the sage Valmiki himself appears, to the television Ramayan.
In Kanpur's Shivala area, the Dashanan Temple opens only on Dussehra, when devotees chant 'Jai Lankesh', and the idol stays covered the rest of the year. Ravan is honoured there as a Shiva devotee, and the temple's foundation is dated to 1868.
In Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, a 35-foot statue installed in 2005 is worshipped on Dussehra morning, because Mandodari is said to be from the town and Ravan is its learned son-in-law. Mandore, near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, mourns rather than burns on Dussehra, since local belief places Mandodari's maternal home there.
In Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, a small temple at Ravangram draws prayers to 'Ravana Baba' and is said to have been consecrated by Kanyakubja Brahmins, the group his lineage belonged to.
At Baijnath in Himachal Pradesh, Dussehra is not observed, and Ravan is respected as a great Shiva devotee rather than worshipped.
Gond and Dalit-Bahujan groups point to Valmiki's more nuanced portrait and argue that the villain of the later Ramcharitmanas is not the only version of the Ramayana. Opposition to effigy burning has also surfaced in Gadchiroli, where a reported letter and posters put up by the banned Maoist party objected to it.
Each community that claims him reads him through their own history, and see in his story a version of their own oppressed pasts. A Rakshasa mother, a Brahmin father, a Shiva-centred devotion and claimants as varied as Gond, Valmiki and Brahmin groups could all be traces of an older, non-Vedic memory of a ruler that the epic recast as a demon.
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